Systems and methods for presenting a content summary of a media item to a uesr based on a position within the media item

ABSTRACT

Systems and methods for presenting a content summary of a media item to a user based on a position within the media item are disclosed herein. According to an aspect, a method may include receiving identification of a position within a media item residing on an electronic device. For example, the identified position may be a bookmarked position within an e-book residing on an e-book reader. The method may also include generating a content summary for a portion of the media item based on the identified position. For example, an electronic device may dynamically generate a content summary based on content of the e-book that precedes a bookmarked position. The method may also include presenting the content summary to a user of the electronic device. For example, a display of an electronic device may be controlled to present a content summary to a reader of an e-book.

CROSS REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATIONS

This application claims the benefit U.S. patent application Ser. No.13/105,856, filed May 11, 2011, which claims the benefit of U.S.Provisional Patent Application No. 61/350,965, filed Jun. 3, 2010; thecontents of which are hereby incorporated herein by reference in theirentireties.

TECHNICAL FIELD

The present disclosure relates to systems and methods for presentingmedia and associated information to electronic device users.

BACKGROUND

Electronic books, or e-books, are text and image-based publications indigital form produced on, published by, and readable on computers orother electronic devices. E-books are often read on dedicated hardwaredevices, such as e-book readers or e-book devices. Personal computers,mobile devices, such as smart phones, and other suitable devices mayalso be used for reading e-books.

Many currently available e-book readers and other devices allow users tomark and persist their current position in an e-book. For example, auser may interact with the device to bookmark a current position in ane-book. When the e-book is later opened on the device, the user can usethe bookmark to quickly return to the position for continuing to readthe e-book. Although bookmarks can be used to remind the user of thelast reading position, a significant amount of time may have passedsince the user last opened the e-book. In these cases, the user may haveforgotten much of the previously read content of the e-book.Accordingly, it is desirable to provide techniques for refreshing auser's memory about an e-book's content.

SUMMARY

This Summary is provided to introduce a selection of concepts in asimplified form that are further described below in the DetailedDescription. This Summary is not intended to identify key features oressential features of the claimed subject matter, nor is it intended tobe used to limit the scope of the claimed subject matter.

Disclosed herein are systems and methods for presenting a contentsummary of a media item to a user based on a position within the mediaitem. According to an aspect, a method may include receivingidentification of a position within a media item residing on anelectronic device. For example, the identified position may be abookmarked position within an e-book residing on an e-book reader. Themethod may also include generating a content summary for a portion ofthe media item based on the identified position. For example, anelectronic device may dynamically generate a content summary based oncontent of the e-book that precedes a bookmarked position. In anotherexample, an electronic device may use a pre-generated summarization forgenerating a content summary of a portion of an e-book that precedes abookmarked position. The method may also include presenting the contentsummary to a user of the electronic device. For example, a display of anelectronic device may be controlled to present a content summary to areader of an e-book.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

The foregoing summary, as well as the following detailed description ofpreferred embodiments, is better understood when read in conjunctionwith the appended drawings. For the purposes of illustration, there isshown in the drawings exemplary embodiments; however, the presentdisclosure is not limited to the specific methods and instrumentalitiesdisclosed. In the drawings:

FIG. 1 is a schematic diagram of a system for presenting a contentsummary to a user of an electronic device according to embodiments ofthe present disclosure;

FIG. 2 is a front view of an e-book reader displaying content of ane-book via its display in accordance with embodiments of the presentdisclosure;

FIG. 3 is a flow chart of an exemplary method for presenting a contentsummary of a media item to a user of an electronic device in accordancewith embodiments of the present disclosure;

FIG. 4A is a front view of an e-book reader displaying content of ane-book and a content summary of the e-book via a display in accordancewith embodiments of the present disclosure;

FIG. 4B illustrates a front view of an e-book reader displaying contentof an e-book and a step in an dynamic summarization process via adisplay in accordance with embodiments of the present disclosure;

FIG. 5 is a flow chart of an exemplary method for generating abookmark-based content summary using pre-generated summaries and acontent segment/summary segment map in accordance with embodiments ofthe present disclosure;

FIG. 6 is a flow chart of an exemplary method for generating abookmark-based content summary using automatic summarization ofdynamically-sized clusters of content segments in accordance withembodiments of the present disclosure;

FIG. 7 is a flow chart of an exemplary method for generating abookmark-based content summary using dynamic ranking and filtering ofautomatically generated summary segments in accordance with embodimentsof the present disclosure;

FIG. 8 is a message flow diagram of an exemplary operation of the systemof FIG. 1 for providing a content summary to an e-book reader accordingto embodiments of the present disclosure;

FIG. 9 is a message flow diagram of another exemplary operation of thesystem of FIG. 1 for providing a content summary to an e-book readeraccording to embodiments of the present disclosure; and

FIG. 10 is a block diagram of the e-book reader shown in FIG. 1according to embodiments of the present disclosure.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION

The present disclosure is described with specificity to meet statutoryrequirements. However, the description itself is not intended to limitthe scope of this patent. Rather, the inventors have contemplated thatthe claimed subject matter might also be embodied in other ways, toinclude different steps or elements similar to the ones described inthis document, in conjunction with other present or future technologies.Moreover, although the term “step” may be used herein to connotedifferent aspects of methods employed, the term should not beinterpreted as implying any particular order among or between varioussteps herein disclosed unless and except when the order of individualsteps is explicitly described.

Embodiments of the present disclosure enable an electronic device, suchas an e-book reader, to identify or receive identification of a positionwithin a media item residing on the electronic device, to generate acontent summary for a portion of the media item based on the identifiedposition, and to present the content summary to a user of the electronicdevice. For example, an e-book reader may identify a bookmarked positionwithin an e-book, generate a content summary for a portion of the e-bookthat precedes the bookmarked position, and display the content summaryto a reader. Other embodiments of the present disclosure enable theelectronic device to generate a content summary based on user-specificinformation or time since the user last read or accessed the media item.

As referred to herein, the term “electronic device” should be broadlyconstrued. It can include any type of device capable of presenting amedia item to a user. For example, the electronic device may be ane-book reader configured to present an e-book to a user. Example e-bookreaders include, but are not limited to, the KINDLE® and NOOK® e-bookreaders. In another example, an electronic device may be a mobile devicesuch as, for example, but not limited to, a smart phone, a cell phone, apager, a personal digital assistant (PDA, e.g., with GPRS NIC), a mobilecomputer with a smart phone client, or the like. An electronic devicecan also include any type of conventional computer, for example, adesktop computer or a laptop computer. A typical mobile device is awireless data access-enabled device (e.g., an iPHONE® smart phone, aBLACKBERRY® smart phone, a NEXUS ONE™ smart phone, an iPAD® device, orthe like) that is capable of sending and receiving data in a wirelessmanner using protocols like the Internet Protocol, or IP, and thewireless application protocol, or WAP. This allows users to accessinformation via wireless devices, such as smart phones, mobile phones,pagers, two-way radios, communicators, and the like. Wireless dataaccess is supported by many wireless networks, including, but notlimited to, CDPD, CDMA, GSM, PDC, PHS, TDMA, FLEX, ReFLEX, iDEN, TETRA,DECT, DataTAC, Mobitex, EDGE and other 2G, 3G, 4G and LTE technologies,and it operates with many handheld device operating systems, such asPalmOS, EPOC, Windows CE, FLEXOS, OS/9, JavaOS, iOS and Android.Typically, these devices use graphical displays and can access theInternet (or other communications network) on so-called mini- ormicro-browsers, which are web browsers with small file sizes that canaccommodate the reduced memory constraints of wireless networks. In arepresentative embodiment, the mobile device is a cellular telephone orsmart phone that operates over GPRS (General Packet Radio Services),which is a data technology for GSM networks. In addition to aconventional voice communication, a given mobile device can communicatewith another such device via many different types of message transfertechniques, including SMS (short message service), enhanced SMS (EMS),multi-media message (MMS), email WAP, paging, or other known orlater-developed wireless data formats. Although many of the examplesprovided herein are implemented on an e-book reader, the examples maysimilarly be implemented on any suitable electronic device, such as acomputer or smart phone.

As referred to herein, the term “media item” should be broadlyconstrued. For example, a media item can include electronic textresiding on an electronic device. Example text can be presented andstored in the form of book pages that may be browsed using an electronicdevice. The text may be stored in any suitable format, such as, but notlimited to, portable document format (PDF), hypertext markup language(HTML), extensible markup language (XML), EPUB, or any suitable e-bookor word processing format. In another example, a media item can includeimage, video, and audio content.

As referred to herein, a “user interface” is generally a system by whichusers interact with an electronic device. An interface can include aninput for allowing users to manipulate an electronic device, and caninclude an output for allowing the system to present information (e.g.,e-book content) and/or data, indicate the effects of the user'smanipulation, etc. An example of an interface on an electronic deviceincludes a graphical user interface (GUI) that allows users to interactwith programs in more ways than typing. A GUI typically can offerdisplay objects, and visual indicators, as opposed to text-basedinterfaces, typed command labels or text navigation to representinformation and actions available to a user. For example, an interfacecan be a display window or display object, which is selectable by a userof a mobile device for interaction. The display object can be displayedon a display screen of an electronic device and can be selected by andinteracted with by a user using the interface. In an example, thedisplay of the electronic device can be a touch screen, which candisplay the display icon. The user can depress the area of the displayscreen at which the display icon is displayed for selecting the displayicon. In another example, the user can use any other suitable interfaceof a mobile device, such as a keypad, to select the display icon ordisplay object. For example, the user can use a track ball or arrow keysfor moving a cursor to highlight and select the display object.

Operating environments in which embodiments of the present disclosuremay be implemented are also well-known. In a representative embodiment,a mobile electronic device, such as an e-book reader, is connectable(for example, via WAP) to a transmission functionality that variesdepending on implementation. Thus, for example, where the operatingenvironment is a wide area wireless network (e.g., a 2.5G network, a 3Gnetwork, or a 4G network), the transmission functionality comprises oneor more components such as a mobile switching center (MSC) (an enhancedISDN switch that is responsible for call handling of mobilesubscribers), a visitor location register (VLR) (an intelligent databasethat stores on a temporary basis data required to handle calls set up orreceived by mobile devices registered with the VLR), a home locationregister (HLR) (an intelligent database responsible for management ofeach subscriber's records), one or more base stations (which provideradio coverage with a cell), a base station controller (BSC) (a switchthat acts as a local concentrator of traffic and provides localswitching to effect handover between base stations), and a packetcontrol unit (PCU) (a device that separates data traffic coming from amobile device). The HLR also controls certain services associated withincoming calls. Of course, embodiments in accordance with the presentdisclosure may be implemented in other and next-generation mobilenetworks and devices as well. The mobile device is the physicalequipment used by the end user, typically a subscriber to the wirelessnetwork. Typically, a mobile device is a 2.5G-compliant device,3G-compliant device, or 4G-compliant device that includes a subscriberidentity module (SIM), which is a smart card that carriessubscriber-specific information, mobile equipment (e.g., radio andassociated signal processing devices), a user interface (or aman-machine interface (MMI)), and one or more interfaces to externaldevices (e.g., computers, PDAs, and the like). The electronic device mayalso include a memory or data store.

The presently disclosed subject matter is now described in more detail.For example, FIG. 1 illustrates a schematic diagram of a system 100 forpresenting a content summary to a user of an electronic device accordingto embodiments of the present disclosure. Referring to FIG. 1, thesystem 100 includes e-book readers 102 and an e-book services server104. The e-book readers 102 may be any type of electronic device capableof presenting media item content to a user. Further, the e-book readers102 comprise a number of functional components. This representation ofthe e-book readers 102 is meant to be for convenience of illustrationand description, and it should not be taken to limit the scope of thepresent disclosure as one or more functions may be combined. Typically,these components are implemented in software (as a set ofprocess-executable computer instructions, associated data structures,and the like). One or more of the functions may be combined or otherwiseimplemented in any suitable manner (e.g., in hardware, in firmware, incombined hardware and software, or the like). The e-book readers 102 mayinclude a media manager 106 for managing storage of one or more mediaitems in a media item store 108 and for controlling presentation of amedia item to a user. The e-book readers 102 may include a userinterface 110 capable of receiving user input and of presenting contentto a user. For example, the user interface 110 may include a displaycapable of presenting e-book content to a user. The media item store 108may be a suitable memory device.

The e-book readers 102 may also be capable of communicating with otherdevices. For example, the e-book readers 102 may include a networkinterface 112 capable of communicating with the server 104 via theInternet 114 or any other suitable network, such as a wireless networkor local area network (LAN). In another example, the e-book readers 102can be Internet-accessible and can interact with the server 104 usingInternet protocols such as HTTP, HTTPS, and the like. The server 104 isshown as a single device but this is not a requirement, whereas one ormore programs, processes, or other code may comprise the server and beexecuted on one or more machines in one or more networked locations. Thee-book readers 102 may also be capable of communicating with one anotheror another electronic device via the Internet 114 or another suitablenetwork.

The operation of the system can be described by the following example.As shown in FIG. 1, the e-book readers 102 include various functionalcomponents and associated data stores to facilitate the operation. Theoperation of the disclosed methods may be implemented using systemcomponents other than as shown in FIG. 1.

A user of one of the e-book readers 102 may use an application (oftenreferred to as an “app”) residing on the e-book reader 102 to interactwith an e-book 116 stored in the media item store 108. The applicationmay reside on the e-book reader 102 and be a part of the media manager106. The user may, for example, input commands into the user interface110 for opening the e-book 116 and for interacting with the e-book 116.The application may present text and/or images of the e-book 116 to theuser via a display of the user interface 110. For example, FIG. 2illustrates a front view of an e-book reader 102 displaying content ofan e-book via its display 200 in accordance with embodiments of thepresent disclosure. In this example, the display 200 is a touch screendisplay. The user may suitably interact with the e-book reader 102 tocontrol the display of different portions of the e-book's content. Forexample, the user may touch the display 200, such as by use of a“swiping” motion on the surface of the display 200, to command the mediamanager 106 to “turn” pages of the e-book as will be understood. Theuser may turn or otherwise select pages for display by any othersuitable technique as will be understood. Graphic 202 indicates that thedisplayed page is a bookmark location.

In another example, the user may interact with the display 200 forselecting one or more portions of the e-book. The user may select aportion of the e-book by touching or swiping a desired portion of thee-book displayed to the user. For example, the user may touch or swipe aword, one or more paragraphs, or the entirety of a displayed page forselecting that portion of the display. The user may turn or otherwiseselect pages for display by any other suitable technique as will beunderstood. The selected portion of the e-book may identify a positionwithin the e-book. The media manager 106 may receive identification ofthe selected portion and, in response, bookmark the correspondingposition within the e-book. As a result, when later opening the e-book,the user may be able to quickly return to the bookmarked position tocontinue reading the e-book.

In accordance with embodiments of the present disclosure, FIG. 3illustrates a flow chart of an exemplary method for presenting a contentsummary of a media item to a user of an electronic device. The method ofFIG. 3 is described with respect to the example system 100 shown in FIG.1, although the method may be implemented by any suitable system orelectronic device. The steps of FIG. 3 may be implemented entirely, orin part, by a media summary generator 118 residing on one of the e-bookreaders 102 shown in FIG. 1. The media summary generator 118 may beimplemented by software, hardware, firmware, or combinations thereof.

Referring to FIG. 3, the method includes receiving identification of aposition within a media item residing on an electronic device (step300). For example, the identified position may be a bookmarked positionwithin text of the e-book 116. In this example, the position may beidentified in response to a user interacting with the user interface 110to input a command for bookmarking the position within the e-book 116.Examples of identifiers for a position within an e-book include, but arenot limited to, a chapter title, chapter number, page number, linenumber, column number, or combinations thereof. Alternatively, theposition identifier may also include indexes into the data structuresrepresenting the e-book 116, such as file offsets, memory locations,traversal paths in Document Object Model (DOM) trees, or anchor tags inHTML. The media manager 106 may manage bookmarking functions and mayreport identification of a bookmarked position to the media summarygenerator 118. Position identifiers may be stored in the media itemstore 108, and may be associated with a corresponding e-book residing inthe store 108. In one embodiment, position identifiers mayalternatively, or in addition, be stored on the server 104, for example,or along with the user's user profile record in the user profile store130.

In another example of identifying a position within a media item, theposition may be identified in response to the media item being closed.In this example, a media item may be opened at a particular positionwhen the user has previously inputted control commands for closing themedia item. Alternatively, or in addition, the e-book reader itself, ora component such as the media manager 106, may issue control commandsfor closing the media item, for example, triggered by timeouts due tolack of user activity. In response to closing the media item, thecurrent position or near the current position is identified and stored.Using the example of the e-book 116, the e-book reader 102 may bedisplaying a specific page of an e-book when the user inputs commands toclose the e-book. In response to receipt of the commands, the mediasummary generator 118 may identify the current page of the e-book 116and may store an identifier of the page in the media item store 108.

At step 302 of FIG. 3, the method includes generating a content summaryfor a portion of the media item based on the identified position. Forexample, the content summary may be generated based on a bookmarkedposition within an e-book. The content summary may also be based on thebookmarked position along with other factors as described herein.Further, for example, the content summary may be generated based on abookmarked position or other identified position within an e-book, auser profile, time elapsed since the user last accessed a media item, orcombinations thereof. In the example of the e-book reader 102, thebookmarked position may be identified as a chapter or page in the e-book116. In this example, the e-book reader 102 may have stored in the mediaitem store 108 one or more content summaries for the e-book 116. One ofthe content summaries may correspond to the identified chapter and mayinclude text that summarizes the text of the e-book 116 up to theidentified chapter or page. The media summary generator 118 may use achapter identifier, page identifier, or another position identifier foraccessing content summaries stored in the media item store 108. Acontent summary corresponding to the identifier may be used for lookingup and accessing a corresponding content summary. In another embodiment,a summary may be dynamically generated by applying automated techniques,such as, but not limited to, semantic analysis, natural languageprocessing and automatic summary generation, to the portion of thecontent based on the position identifier. Such automated summarizationtechniques are understood by those of skill in the art, and may includeextraction as well as abstraction techniques, key-phrase extraction,document summarization, statistical methods, supervised or unsupervisedlearning techniques, and the like.

In an example of generating a content summary, the content summary maybe generated based on user-specific information. For example, the mediasummary generator 118 may receive or gather information about a userthat has accessed or opened the e-book 116. The information may includea profile of the user, gaze-tracking information for the user,annotations of the user, social network information of the user, thelike, or combinations thereof. The media summary generator 118 may usethis information for generating a content summary for a media item, suchas the e-book 116, in accordance with embodiments of the presentdisclosure.

In one embodiment, the demographic information of a user may be used togenerate the content summary. As an example, the gender and age of theuser may be used along with heuristics to infer which aspects of thecontent may interest the user more than other aspects, and hence may beused to bias the summary towards those aspects. As an example, thecontent summary of a narrative text may include, in addition to the mainsummary, for adult female users, events or actions of primary femalecharacters, whereas for adult male users, the summary may be biased moretowards the events or actions of primary male characters, on the premisethat users may relate more to characters of their own gender. Forreaders of a different age, the bias may be reversed. In anotherembodiment, other information from a user profile, such as interests,preferences, content history and content engagement, may be used tocustomize the generated summary by inferring the relevance of segmentsof the summary to the user. This information may be stored in the userprofile as a set of keywords, key-phrases, genres, names of authors, orother such metadata. For example, by applying keyword matching betweensegments from the generated summary and the keywords in a user profile,segments with greater keyword matching may be determined to be morerelevant. In another embodiment, the preferences and keywords from auser profile may be mapped to an ontology, and matching words or phrasesin content segments to the same ontology may be used to determine therelevance of content segments to the user, and this relevance can beused to generate a summary customized for the user.

As another example, for a deeply technical content item, gaze trackingor other methods of determining user-engagement may be used to identifysegments that the user has more difficulty understanding, such as byidentifying the segments the user re-reads more than once, and thenassigning such segments higher weight during the summary generationmethod. Customizing the generated content summary based on thisdetermined relevance may include selecting sentences to be included inthe summary based on relevance, filtering or de-emphasizing summarysegments determined to be less relevant to the user, emphasizing summarysegments that may be more relevant to the user, or replacing lessrelevant segments with more relevant segments that are located close toeach other in the content. In an embodiment, extraction-based methodsare used for summary generation, whereby content segments, such aspassages, sentences, phrases or words are ranked or weighted based on ametric of how well they may be representative of other segments orsections of the content, and extracting them for inclusion in a summarybased on a function of the rank or weight, such as by comparing to athreshold value. In this case, sentences or phrases to be selected forinclusion in a summary are weighted more or less based on whether theyalso contain terms or references that are related to the user'spreferences. Hence, when the summary is generated, the highest weightedsentences or phrases are selected, thus resulting in a summary that ismore relevant to the terms in a user profile.

In another embodiment, a user-specific content summary may be generatedvia query-biased summary generation, where the query includes terms thatare of interest to the user. In yet another embodiment, pre-generatedcontent summaries are provided for each segment of the content, and asummary is generated by combining the summary segments corresponding tothe portion of the content identified by the position identifier. Eachof these content summary segments may include metadata comprising: thekeywords or ontological concepts that apply to that segment; rules orkeywords relating to the types of user that each segment is mostrelevant to; a basic pre-assigned weight to be used for the segmentduring summary generation; and so on. Hence, when a summary is generatedfor the user, terms from a user profile may be matched with suchmetadata of each content summary segment to estimate the relevance ofthat segment to the user. Alternatively, other methods previouslydescribed, such as matching keywords in the pre-generated summarysegments and the user profile may be used to estimate the relevance ofthe segments. This relevance may be used to determine whether thatsegment should be included in the generated summary. Note that anycombination of the above methods may be used, and different methods maybe used for different users or content types, such as for fiction versusnon-fiction texts.

User profile information may be used as a factor for generating acontent summary. By use of user profile information, information morerelevant to the user may be identified. Example user profile informationincludes, but is not limited to, gender of a user, age of a user,gaze-tracking to identify a user's interests, sentiment analysis of userannotations and comments, and a user's social network activity.Relevance information may include, for example, but is not limited to,keywords based on the user profile, words the user focused on (e.g.,based on gaze tracking), estimated character empathy (e.g., based onuser demographics), and the like. Other example information in the userprofile may include preferred genres, names of favorite authors andkeywords, key-phrases or terms describing types of content, or othersuch metadata. Such information may either be provided manually by theuser, or automatically inferred from multiple sources such as: analysisof previous content consumed, including textual, web, video and audiocontent; book reading behavior; web browsing history; social mediagenerated; social network information; and so on. In addition, interestsmay also be inferred via methods measuring user engagement with avariety of content types, for example, via gaze tracking or determiningthe types of content the user annotates. Other information may includethe user's preferences in summary generation, which may be manuallyconfigured by the user, or inferred by analysis of the user's readingbehavior. As an example, the user's reading behavior when resumingreading in the absence of a content summary may be analyzed. If the userspends more time reading through more recently read content, the summarygeneration process may assign more weight to summary segmentscorresponding to more recently read chapters. Alternately, if the userspends more time reading through less recently read content, the summarygeneration process may assign more weight to the earlier chapters.

In another example of generating a content summary, the content summarymay be generated based on a time elapsed since the user last accessed amedia item. For example, the e-book reader 102 may have stored in themedia item store 108 one or more content summaries for the e-book 116.The lengths of the content summaries may vary, where longer contentsummaries include a higher level of detail as compared to shortercontent summaries. The media summary generator 118 may compare anelapsed time since the user last accessed the e-book 116 to one or morethresholds. One of the content summaries may be selected based on thecomparison. In response to determining that the elapsed time is greaterthan a threshold, a content summary having a high level of detail orgreater amount of description may be selected for use in refreshing theuser's memory. It is reasoned that if it has been a long time since auser last accessed an e-book, then a greater amount of summary detailmay be needed to refresh the user's memory. Conversely, in response todetermining that the elapsed time is less than a threshold, a contentsummary having a low level of detail may be selected, since only a lowlevel of detail may be needed to refresh the user's memory.

Further, regarding use of a time elapsed since user access of a mediaitem, the media summary generator 118 may track the amount of time auser took for reading content segments (e.g., chapters) of an e-book,and/or may track the time elapsed since the user has read each contentsegment. For example, a user's activity may include, in the followingsequence: read chapter 1, take a break, read chapter 2, take a break,and so on until chapter 6. After chapter 6, the user may take a longbreak and input a command for the content up to chapter 6 to besummarized. The media summary generator 118 may generate a summaryhaving an increased level of detail for chapter 1, less for chapter 3,and so on until the summary is the shortest for chapter 6. In anotherembodiment, the rules may be reversed, on the premise that the immediatecontent preceding the user's current position is more important toprovide a more complete context. Hence, a more detailed summary may begenerated for the most recently read segments, and a less detailedsummary for the least recently read segments. In yet another embodiment,the rules may be mixed. For instance, the detail of the content summarymay reduce with each successive segment, except for the most recentlyread segment, which may be needed to provide better context to theuser's current position in the content. In yet another embodiment, thelevel of detail for different portions may be determined based onwhether, or how often, the portion has been summarized and presented tothe user on previous occasions. Specifically, the level of detail for aportion is inversely proportional to the number of times its summary hasbeen previously presented to the user, so that the user need not readthe same summary segments again and again every time the user resumesreading the e-book. As such, the media summary generator 118 may keeprecords, either on the e-book services server 104 or in the localstorage 108, of which portions of the content have been summarized andpresented to the user over time. These rules may be pre-configured oradapted based on one or more of the user's input commands, user-profile,user preferences, analysis of user reading behavior (such as pastreading behavior when resuming reading), the type of content (such asfiction versus non-fiction), or rules based on metadata provided withpre-generated content summaries. The media summary generator 118 may setthe level of detail for each chapter based on the time since the chapterwas read.

In accordance with embodiments of the present disclosure, a user mayselect to present or display either a content summary with a high amountof description, or a content summary with less description. Both contentsummaries may be generated, and the user may enter input for selectingone of the two. In response to the selection, a display may becontrolled for displaying the selected content summary. In anotherexample, the selection may be based on an elapsed time since the userlast accessed the e-book. In this example, if the elapsed time isgreater than a threshold, the content summary with greater detail may bedisplayed. In contrast, if the elapsed time is less than a threshold,the content summary with less detail may be displayed. There may be morethan two levels of content summaries for a portion of an e-book. Thevarious levels of content summaries may have varying levels of detailthat may be selectively presented. The summaries may be automaticallygenerated or entered by a human.

In accordance with embodiments of the present disclosure, an extractivetechnique may be utilized in the creation of a content summary. Forexample, key phrases, words, and/or sentences in content may beidentified and used in a summary for the content. The length of thecontent summary may be adapted by varying constraints or thresholds onthe ranks or scores of phrases, words, and/or sentences in the content.Low ranking or scoring phrases, words, and/or sentences may beextracted, while others are used in the summary. Phrases, words, and/orsentences may be extracted from use in the summary based on a relevancylevel assigned to the phrases, words, and/or sentences. As previouslydescribed, ranks or weights of the extracted phrases, words or sentencesmay also depend on the user profile. The threshold may be varied tochange the length of the summary. For example, a short summary mayinclude only phrases scoring in a top 10% of relevancy among all phrasesin content of a portion of an e-book to be summarized. Further, forexample, a long summary may include only phrases scoring in a top 20% ofrelevancy among all phrases in the content. Different thresholds orother constraints may be applied to different portions of content in ane-book. For example, variations in constraints may be linear or randombased on a distance from an identified position, such as a bookmarkedposition, or based on the time elapsed since that portion has been readby the user.

In another example of generating a content summary, the content summarymay be generated based on a portion of a media item residing between abeginning of the media item and an identified position, such as abookmarked position or a position where the media item was closed. Forexample, a suitable summarization technique may be used to generate asummary of the portion residing between the beginning of the media itemand the identified position. This technique may be combined with thedetermination of a time elapsed since the user last accessed a mediaitem. The size of the portion of the media item that is summarized maybe based on the elapsed time. For example, the media summary generator118 may compare an elapsed time since the user last accessed the e-book116 to one or more thresholds. The amount of content that is summarizedmay be determined based on the comparison. In response to determiningthat the elapsed time is greater than a threshold, a content summary maybe generated based on multiple chapters or pages. Conversely, forexample, in response to determining that the elapsed time is less than athreshold, a content summary may be generated based on only a singlechapter or a few pages.

In accordance with embodiments of the present disclosure, any suitabletechnique may be utilized to summarize content of a media item. Forexample, the media summary generator 118 may apply a semantic analysistechnique to a portion of the e-book 116 for generating a contentsummary. In another example, the media summary generator 118 may apply anatural language processing (NLP) technique to a portion of the e-book116 for generating a content summary. Such summarization techniques maybe used for summarizing content in accordance with embodiments of thepresent disclosure.

In accordance with embodiments of the present disclosure, a contentsummary may be dynamically generated in response to the opening of mediacontent on an electronic device. For example, a user may use the userinterface 110 to input a command for opening the e-book 116. In thisexample, the e-book 116 may be opened at a particular page or chapter,such as a bookmarked page or chapter. In response to receiving the userinput to control the opening of the e-book 116, the media summarygenerator 118 may dynamically generate a content summary for a portionof the e-book 116 that corresponds to the position where the e-book 116was opened. The content summary may be generated in accordance withembodiments of the present disclosure. In another embodiment of thepresent disclosure, a content summary may be generated via a backgroundprocess as the user finishes reading each segment of the content, forinstance, at the end of each chapter. Thus, the summary may be availablefor presentation at short notice any time the user resumes. Note thatthe background process may also continually or at intervals adapt thepreviously generated summary as a function of time elapsed.

In accordance with embodiments of the present disclosure, generation ofa content summary may include retrieving a pre-generated summarizationof the media content. For example, referring to FIG. 1, one of thee-book readers 102 may retrieve a pre-generated summarization of themedia content from the e-book services server 104. In this example, thesummarization of the e-book 116 may be stored in a summary andcontent/summary segment map store 120, which may be a database server.The e-book reader 102 may request the summarization from the server 104via the Internet 114. In response to the request, the server 104 mayaccess the store 120 for obtaining the summarization for the e-book 116.Next, the server 104 may communicate the summarization to the e-bookreader 102 that requested the summarization. Alternatively, thepre-generated summarization may be retrieved from another source orretrieved from the media item store 108.

The pre-generated summarization may be truncated and presented to a userin accordance with embodiments of the present disclosure. For example, auser of the e-book reader 102 may be presented with a pre-generatedsummarization of the e-book 116. Further, the pre-generatedsummarization may be truncated based on a position within the e-book116. For example, the pre-generated summarization may be truncated basedon an identified position with the e-book 116, such as a bookmarkedposition. The media summary generator 118 may truncate the pre-generatedsummarization by identifying a portion of the summarization thatcorresponds to the identified position. The portion of the summarizationmay be identified by use of a mapping that maps the summarization to theidentified position. The mapping may map portions of the pre-generatedsummarization to various portions of the media item that are relevant tothe content summary. The mapping may be retrieved from, for example, thestore 120 or the local store 108. The truncated summarization may thenbe presented to a user. In this way, the user is only provided with thepart of the summarization that corresponds to his or her position withinthe e-book 116.

In an example, a mapping may include, along with a summary, metadataand/or annotations for indicating which portion of a summary correspondsto which portion of content of an e-book. The metadata or annotationsmay be human-generated or automatically generated by comparing keywordsor syntactic parses and/or semantic analysis of the summary with that ofthe content.

At step 304 of FIG. 3, the method includes presenting the contentsummary to a user of the electronic device. For example, a contentsummary associated with a current position of the user may be displayedby use of a display. In the example of FIG. 1, a content summary of abookmarked position of the e-book 116 may be presented to the user byuse of a display of the user interface 110. The display of the contentsummary may include displaying text of the content summary, anidentifier for the position in the media item that is associated withthe content summary, other text as described herein, suitable graphicsor images, and combinations thereof.

Referring to FIG. 1, the e-book services server 104 may be any type ofserver capable of communicating with electronic devices and providinginformation to the electronic devices. The server 104 may include anumber of functional components. This representation of the server 104is meant to be for convenience of illustration and description, and itshould not be taken to limit the scope of the present disclosure as oneor more functions may be combined. Typically, these components areimplemented in software (as a set of process-executable computerinstructions, associated data structures, and the like). One or morefunctions may be combined or otherwise implemented in any suitablemanner (e.g., in hardware, in firmware, in combined hardware andsoftware, or the like). The server 104 may include a processor 122 forimplementing process-executable instructions. The server 104 may includea network interface 124 for communicating with the e-book readers 102via the Internet 114 or any other suitable network.

The server 104 may have access to one or more database servers. Forexample, in addition to the store 120 described herein, the server 104may have access to an e-book-related metadata store 126, an e-bookcontent store 128, and a user profile store 130. The e-book-relatedmetadata store 126 may store information about one or more e-books, suchas, but not limited to, author name, publisher information, authorbiography, publishing date, editor information, genres andcategorization information, pricing information, previews, excerpts,cover images, cover text, bibliographic information, copyrightinformation, digital rights management (DRM) information, reviews, usercomments, metadata such as number of words, chapters, pages andeditions, target audience and reader demographics, and the like. Thee-book content store 128 may contain e-books. The user profile store 130may include profile information for readers of the e-books stored at thee-book content store 128. The information contained in the stores 120,126, 128, and 130 may be accessible to the e-book readers 102 by requestto the server 104. For example, the e-book readers 102 may requestdownloading of the content of the servers. The server 104 may access thestores for communicating the requested content to the e-book readers 102in response to requests. The downloaded content may be used by thee-book readers 102 for generating content summaries in accordance withembodiments of the present disclosure.

FIG. 4A illustrates a front view of an e-book reader 102 displayingcontent of an e-book and a content summary of the e-book via the display200 in accordance with embodiments of the present disclosure. Referringto FIG. 4A, the e-book reader 102 is displaying text of a page 400 of ane-book. The text of the page 400 may be displayed within a window. Thecontent summary may be displayed at or near the corresponding content.For example, text of a content summary corresponding to the displayedpage 400 may be displayed within another window 402 positioned over thewindow display of the page 400 of the e-book. The content summary may bea summary of the 10 pages preceding the displayed page 400, which may bea bookmarked page.

The window 402 may also display a graphical user interface (GUI) object404 that may be user-controlled for selecting a portion of the e-bookfor content summarization display. In this example, the object 404 is ascrollbar that may be controlled for selecting a number of pagespreceding the currently displayed page of the e-book. In response to theselection, the window 402 may display a content summary for the selectednumber of pages preceding the currently displayed page. Any othersuitable user input may be used for selecting a portion of an e-book forcontent summarization display. For example, the user may enter inputidentifying a range of pages in the e-book for summarization anddisplay. In another embodiment, the GUI object 404 may be adapted tocontrol the level of detail of the generated summary. Note that this isonly one of many possible embodiments for displaying a summary. In onealternate embodiment, more dynamic and visually appealing methods may beemployed, such as animated navigation to the bookmark position bydisplaying e-book pages automatically flipping to the bookmarked page.In this embodiment, displaying the generated content summary to the usermay be effected by emphasizing the summary segments, such as key phrasesand sentences that are extracted as part of the summary, on the pagesthat the selected segments appear on as the page flips by in theanimation. Emphasizing extracted summary segments may comprisehighlighting the segments on the page, de-emphasizing the non-summarytext around the summary segments, or a combination of both. Emphasis orde-emphasis may be achieved by, for example, changing the font type,color, characteristics (bold, italics) and size of the text of thesummary segment. In addition, the page-flipping animation may becontrolled to better display the summary by adapting the flipping rateto make the highlighted summary segments more visible, such as bypausing at, or slowing down the flipping of, the corresponding pages onwhich summary segments appear. Note that the multiple embodiments may beprovided, and the exact embodiment for displaying summaries may beconfigurable by the user, or by metadata provided along with the e-bookby the creators of the e-book or the e-book service 104. Also note thata summary may not be generated or presented to the user at all, forexample, if it is determined that the time elapsed since the lastsession is below a threshold.

In another embodiment, FIG. 4B illustrates a front view of an e-bookreader 102 displaying content of an e-book and a step in a dynamicsummarization process via the display 200 in accordance with embodimentsof the present disclosure. In this example, a reader may stop readingfor a time and may bookmark the page at which he or she stopped. Later,the reader resumes reading and the media summary generator 118 maydetermine that the reader could benefit from a summary in response todetermining that at least a predetermined time has passed since thereader last read the e-book. In this case, the media summary generator118 may control the display 200 to generate an animation for summarizingcontent of the e-book up to the bookmarked location in the e-book. Forexample, the animation may include “flipping” the pages of the e-bookrapidly and highlighting key sentences, names, keywords, and/or the likefor quickly summarizing content that the reader has read thus far. Forexample, referring to FIG. 4B, the media summary generator 118 mayrecognize that the reader is about to enter a portion of the e-book thatfocuses heavily on a particular character. The reader's memory of thischaracter may be refreshed by interleaving one or more significant factsabout the character. In this example, the reader is reminded that the“Major Major,” indicated by highlighting this text 406, looks a lot likethe actor “Henry Fonda,” indicated by highlighting the text 408. Such ananimation may orient the reader both “spatially” and conceptually withinthe e-book. After one or more contextually relevant “conceptual” or“catch up” stops, the “flipping” of pages may stop at the bookmarkedposition with, for example, a virtual bookmark indicating an exact pointwhere the reader stopped reading, such as detected by a gaze tracker.

In accordance with embodiments of the present disclosure, FIG. 5illustrates a flow chart of an exemplary method for generating abookmark-based content summary using pre-generated summaries and acontent segment/summary segment map. The method of FIG. 5 is describedwith respect to the system 100 shown in FIG. 1, although the method maybe implemented by any suitable system or electronic device. The steps ofFIG. 5 may be implemented entirely, or in part, by a media summarygenerator 118 residing on one of the e-book readers 102 shown in FIG. 1.The media summary generator 118 may be implemented by software,hardware, firmware, or combinations thereof.

Referring to FIG. 5, the method includes returning to a bookmarkedposition within an e-book (step 500). For example, a user of one of thee-book readers 102 shown in FIG. 1 may enter an input command foropening the e-book 116 at a bookmarked page.

The method of FIG. 5 includes identifying one or more content segmentsup to the bookmarked position (step 502). For example, one or more pagesor chapters in the e-book 116 may precede a bookmarked page. In thisexample, the media summary generator 118 may identify the pages orchapters preceding the bookmarked page.

The method of FIG. 5 includes retrieving a content segment/summarysegment map (step 504). For example, the e-book reader 102 may retrievea content segment/summary segment map from the store 120 shown inFIG. 1. Alternatively, for example, the map may be retrieved from alocal data source, such as the store 108, where the map resides. The mapmay include a mapping between content segments of an e-book andpre-generated content summaries for the segments. For example, the mapmay include identifiers of chapters of the e-book 116, and a mappingbetween the chapter identifiers and content summaries for eachidentified chapter. Alternatively, for example, mappings can be providedbetween pages, paragraphs, or any other content segment andcorresponding summaries for those segments. A content summary for acontent segment, such as a chapter, may contain text that summarizes thecontent segment.

In an embodiment, there can be a one-to-one mapping between a contentsegment and a summary segment. As such, the map data structure is quitestraightforward. In another embodiment, there may be a one-to-manymapping between a content segment and summary segments, where onecontent segment may map to multiple content segments of, for example,varying levels of detail. In yet another embodiment, there may be aone-to-one mapping between a content segment and summary segment, butthe summary segment may comprise a more complex data structure thatcontains multiple versions of the same summary, such as versions withvarying levels of detail. In another embodiment, the summary segmentdata structure may have a hierarchical or tree-like nature, whereby eachlevel of the summary segment has multiple child levels, and each levelmay contain text corresponding to a different level of verbosity. Forexample, each subsequent level may contain a more detailed version ofthe level above, or may contain text that adds detail to the text of thelevel above. Alternatively, or in addition, each level may containsummary text that emphasizes a different aspect of the content. Thehierarchical summary segment may also contain metadata describing therelationship between each parent level and child levels, as well asmetadata containing keywords about the summary segment text. Suchmetadata could include, for example, relations such as “more detailedversion of parent level”, or “focusing more on a specific character X”,or “more relevant to a reader demographic Y”. Hence, summary generationfor a given level of detail and a given user profile for a contentsegment may be performed by: traversing the different levels of thehierarchical summary segment for that content segment; matching themetadata of each level with the required detail and the user profile;identifying the level or levels having the best match; and selecting thesummary text from the identified level. The content segment/summarysegment maps, as well as the hierarchical summary segment, may be storedand provided in, for example, XML or RDF formats. Note that the summarysegments and the corresponding data structures may be created usingautomated methods as described in detail later, or by humans, eithermanually or using machine-aided tools, such as annotation utilities.

The method of FIG. 5 includes initializing text of a content summary(step 506). For example, the media summary generator 118 may initializethe text of a content summary for the text of the e-book 116 up to abookmarked position. The text for a total content summary may beinitialized to empty (i.e., no text). In another example, the mediasummary generator 118 may initialize the text of a content summary forthe e-book 116 to a default string of text (e.g., “The story so far . .. ”). Other summary text may be used for filling the total contentsummary, or may be appended to follow the default string of text, aswill be described in the following example steps 508-516. For example,the content summaries for the chapters up to the bookmarked position maybe used to complete the text of the total content summary after thedefault string of text.

Referring to step 508 of FIG. 5, the method includes fetching a nextidentified content segment. For example, the media summary generator 118may fetch a first segment of the segments identified in step 502.Continuing the example of the e-book 116, the media summary generator118 may fetch the first identified chapter.

At step 510 of FIG. 5, the method includes identifying one or moresummary segments for the identified content segment. For example, themedia summary generator 118 may use the content segment/summary segmentmap for identifying a summary segment for the identified content segmentof step 508.

At step 512 of FIG. 5, the method includes ranking the identifiedsummary segments of step 510. For example, if more than one summarysegment was identified for the content segment, the media summarygenerator 118 may rank the summary segments based on one or morepredefined criteria such as, for example, but not limited to, a distanceof the identified content segment from a bookmarked position, a timesince a corresponding content segment was read, a relevance of a contentsegment to a current bookmarked position, user profile information(e.g., a user's interest in the identified summary segment), and thelike.

In the example of a content segment relevance, a relevancy level may beassigned to a content segment or other portion of the e-book. Thecontent summary may be generated based on the relevancy level of thecontent segment. If the relevancy level of the content segment is higherthan a threshold, a content summary of the segment may be generated. Incontrast, if the relevancy level of the content segment is lower than athreshold, no content summary may be generated for the segment.

At step 514 of FIG. 5, the method includes selecting one or more topranked, identified summary segments of step 512. The number of topranked summary segments that are selected may be based upon, forexample, but not limited to, a distance of the identified contentsegment from a bookmarked position, a time since a corresponding contentsegment was read, a relevance of a content segment to a currentbookmarked position, user profile information (e.g., a user's interestin the identified summary segment), the like, or combinations thereof.In an example, the media summary generator 118 may select one or moretop ranked identified summary segments.

At step 516 of FIG. 5, the method includes appending the selected topranked, identified summary segments to the text of the content summary.For example, the media summary generator 118 may append selected topranked, identified summary segments to the text of the content summaryfor the e-book 116. In an embodiment, the media summary generator 118may insert some other text or apply formatting to the selected summarysegment before appending to the content summary, such as, for example,the chapter number or page numbers for the content segment to which theselected summary segment corresponds. If the necessary information isavailable, the media summary generator 118 may also insertpre-determined text segments that indicate a relation between thepreviously selected and currently selected summary segment. As anexample, a time-based relation indicating the passage of time betweenconsecutive selected summary segments may be indicated by inserting thephrase “Several years later . . . ” between the segments.

At step 518 of FIG. 5, the method includes determining whether there aremore identified content segments. For example, the media summarygenerator 118 may determine whether there are more identified contentsegments. In response to determining that there are more identifiedcontent segments, the method may proceed to step 508 to fetch the nextidentified content segment for identifying one or more summary segmentsfor the identified content segment (step 510), ranking identifiedsummary segments (step 512), selecting top ranked identified summarysegments (step 514), and appending the selected identified summarysegments to the text of the content summary (step 516). Steps 508-518may be performed iteratively until there are no more identifiedsegments. In response to determining that there are no more identifiedcontent segments at step 518, the method may proceed to step 520.

At step 520 of FIG. 5, the method includes formatting text of thecontent summary. For example, the formatting may include editing thetext into correct grammatical format. The media summary generator 118may format text of the content summary. An example of formatting may beto adjust the font characteristics, or insert spaces of paragraph breaksafter certain summary segments to be more visually appealing.Alternatively, the media summary generator 118 may insert an ellipsisbetween certain summary segments to indicate, for example,non-continuity, or at the end of the content summary to indicateincompleteness. As another example, if the content is an opinion piece,certain segments may be prefaced with the words “In the author'sopinion”. In one embodiment, the generator 118 may parse the summary toidentify any context specific words and filter them or replace withellipses to preserve consistency. For example, in an extracted summarysegment “On the following Thursday, Bob proposed to Alice,” the day ofthe week may be contextually irrelevant or confusing, and hence may beremoved such that the segment becomes “Bob proposed to Alice.” Inanother embodiment, the generated summary may be parsed and convertedinto a different form, for example, to a different tense more suited fora summary, or a subset of segments may be converted to a differenttense, for example, to maintain a consistent tense throughout thesummary. In one embodiment, this may be performed by using aparts-of-speech tagger to tag each word with the corresponding parts ofspeech, such as nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs; using a stemmer tostem the tagged words; and using a natural language generator (NLG) togenerate a sentence from the stemmed tagged words in a given format. Asan example, conversion to a different tense may be performed by using aparts-of-speech tagger on the words to identify verbs from a segment;using a stemmer to obtain the stem of those extracted verbs; using anatural language generator to conjugate the stemmed extracted verbs withthe desired tense; and re-inserting the conjugated stemmed extractedverbs into the segment. It is noted that the formatting and otherpost-processing may also depend on the type of content, the userprofile, and the like.

At step 522 of FIG. 5, the method includes presenting the contentsummary to a user. For example, the media summary generator 118 maycontrol the user interface 110 to display text of the content summary.

In accordance with embodiments of the present disclosure, FIG. 6illustrates a flow chart of an exemplary method for generating abookmark-based content summary using automatic summarization ofdynamically-sized clusters of content segments. The method of FIG. 6 isdescribed with respect to the system 100 shown in FIG. 1, although themethod may be implemented by any suitable system or electronic device.The steps of FIG. 6 may be implemented entirely, or in part, by a mediasummary generator 118 residing on one of the e-book readers 102 shown inFIG. 1. The media summary generator 118 may be implemented by software,hardware, firmware, or combinations thereof.

Referring to FIG. 6, the method includes receiving a user request for acontent summary of e-book content up to a bookmarked position (step600). For example, the user may input a command into the user interface110 for requesting a content summary of the e-book 116 up to abookmarked position. In an example, the user may select an icon on apage of the e-book 116 for requesting content summary. The media summarygenerator 118 may receive the command for requesting the content summaryof the e-book 116 up to the identified position.

At step 602 of FIG. 6, the method includes identifying fine-grainedcontent segments up to the bookmarked position. For example, one or morepages or chapters in the e-book 116 may precede a bookmarked page. Inthis example, the media summary generator 118 may identify pages and/orchapters preceding the bookmarked pages. At step 604, the methodincludes grouping sequential fine-grained content segments intoclusters. For example, the media summary generator 118 may groupadjacent or nearby pages and/or chapters of the e-book 116 intoclusters.

In accordance with embodiments of the present disclosure, sizes of theclusters that are grouped together may be based on a distance of contentsegments from the bookmarked position. For example, pages and/orchapters that are positioned a greater distance from the bookmarkedposition may be placed together in larger clusters. For example, if thebookmarked position is at chapter 12 of the e-book 116, the mediasummary generator 118 may place chapters 1-5 together in a cluster, mayplace chapters 6-10 together in another cluster, and may place chapter11 in yet another cluster.

The verbosity (e.g., detail and length) of a content summary may varybased on proximity of content to a bookmarked position. For example,summaries can be more detailed as summary portions of content are closerto the bookmarked position. Alternatively, for example, summaries may beless detailed as summary portions of content are closer to thebookmarked position. This example may be based on the premise that areader may have forgotten more of earlier read content than the contentcloser to the bookmarked position. The distance from a bookmarkedposition to other portions of the e-book may be measured, for example,but not limited to, a number of media units (e.g., words, lines, pages,chapters, letters, and the like), estimated reading time, estimatedreading time based on a user's reading speed, and combinations thereof.

As will be described in the following example steps 606-616, theclusters may each be used to generate a content summary of theirrespective content segment(s). These content summaries may be combinedtogether for providing a total content summary up to the bookmarkedposition.

The method of FIG. 6 includes accessing a next cluster (step 606) andapplying an automated summarization technique to the cluster (step 608).For example, the media summary generator 118 may access a first clusterfor the e-book 116, which corresponds to chapters 1-5. A summarizationtechnique may be applied to the content of chapters 1-5. For example,the media summary generator 118 may apply a semantic analysis technique,an NLP technique, a summary extraction technique, the like, orcombinations thereof to the content of chapters 1-5. The resultingsummarization of the content associated with the cluster may be referredto as a “summary segment.”

At step 610 of FIG. 6, the method includes filtering the summarysegments based on one or more criteria. For example, the media summarygenerator 118 may filter a generated or extracted summary segment basedon criteria, such as, but not limited to, a distance of the content froma bookmarked position, a time since the e-book was last read, and thelike. For example, if an extractive technique is used in constructingthe summary segment, it ranks segments in the content, such assentences, phrases and words, and extracts them for inclusion in thesummary based on a function of the rank, for instance, by comparing to athreshold value. Before filtering these segments, the media summarygenerator 118 may adapt the rank using additional metrics such asdistance from the bookmark position or time elapsed, by, for example,multiplying by a weighing factor that is directly proportional to thedistance from the bookmark and the time elapsed. Thus, when compared toa threshold, summary segments for portions that are farther from thebookmark or have been read much more previously are more likely to beincluded in the summary than other segments.

At step 612 of FIG. 6, the method includes appending the summarysegments to the text of the total content summary. For example, themedia summary generator 118 may append the summary segments to the textof the total content summary for the e-book 116.

At step 614 of FIG. 6, the method includes creating an entry in acontent/summary segment map for associating the summary segment with thecontent segment corresponding to the cluster. For example, the mediasummary generator 118 may access or, if a map for the e-book does notexist, create a content/summary segment map for the e-book 116. Further,in this example, the media summary generator 118 may create an entry inthe map for mapping the generated summary segment with a correspondingcluster. Continuing the example of the e-book 116, the media summarygenerator 118 may create entries in a map for mapping summary segmentsfor each of the clusters (e.g., clusters for chapters 1-5, chapters6-10, and chapter 11) to identifiers for the corresponding content ofthe e-book 116.

At step 616 of FIG. 6, the method includes saving the summary segment tostorage. For example, the media summary generator 118 may store thesummary segment to the store 108 or any other suitable memory.

At step 618 of FIG. 6, the method includes determining whether there aremore clusters. For example, the media summary generator 118 maydetermine whether there are more clusters for summarization. In responseto determining that there are more clusters, the method may proceed tostep 606 to access the next cluster for summarization (step 608),filtering (step 610), appending of the summary segment to the text ofthe content summary (step 612), creating a map entry (step 614), andsaving of the summary segment (step 616). Steps 606-618 may be performediteratively until there are no more clusters. In response to determiningthat there are no more clusters at step 618, the method may proceed tostep 620.

At step 620 of FIG. 6, the method includes presenting the contentsummary and returning the map. In an embodiment, the media summarygenerator 118 may also format the summary before presentation aspreviously described for step 520 of FIG. 5. For example, the mediasummary generator 118 may control the user interface 110 to display textof the content summary. Further, for example, the map generated for thee-book 116 may be stored locally at store 108, or remotely at store 120.

In accordance with embodiments of the present disclosure, FIG. 7illustrates a flow chart of an exemplary method for generating abookmark-based content summary using dynamic ranking and filtering ofautomatically generated summary segments. The method of FIG. 7 isdescribed with respect to the system 100 shown in FIG. 1, although themethod may be implemented by any suitable system or electronic device.The steps of FIG. 7 may be implemented entirely, or in part, by a mediasummary generator 118 residing on one of the e-book readers 102 shown inFIG. 1. The media summary generator 118 may be implemented by software,hardware, firmware, or combinations thereof.

Referring to FIG. 7, the method includes receiving a user request for acontent summary of e-book content up to a bookmarked position (step700). For example, the user may input a command into the user interface110 for requesting a content summary of the e-book 116 up to abookmarked position. In an example, the user may select an icon on apage of the e-book 116 for requesting a content summary. The mediasummary generator 118 may receive the command for requesting the contentsummary of the e-book 116 up to the identified position.

At step 702 of FIG. 7, the method includes applying one or moreautomated summarization techniques to the e-book content up to thebookmarked position to generate or extract summary segments. Forexample, the media summary generator 118 may use a suitablesummarization technique for summarizing chapters of the e-book 116. Eachchapter summary may be a summary segment.

At step 704 of FIG. 7, the method includes prioritizing the summarysegments based on one or more predefined criteria such as, for example,but not limited to, a distance of the identified content segment from abookmarked position (e.g., content segments positioned closer to thebookmarked position have higher priority), a time since a correspondingcontent segment was read, a relevance of a content segment to an overallsummary (e.g., summary segments having more keywords in common with thecomplete summary or the whole e-book have higher priority), and thelike.

At step 706 of FIG. 7, the method includes filtering summary segmentsbased on priority to achieve a predetermined verbosity level. Forexample, the media summary generator 118 may filter the summarysegments. The verbosity level may depend on multiple criteria such as,but not limited to, distance from a bookmarked position, time since thecorresponding content segment was last read, relevance, and the like.

At step 708 of FIG. 7, the method includes creating entries in acontent/summary segment map for associating summary segments withcorresponding content segments. These are the content segments fromwhich the summary segments were generated or extracted from. Forexample, the media summary generator 118 may create entries in a map formapping the generated summary segments with corresponding contentsegments. Continuing the example of the e-book 116, the media summarygenerator 118 may create entries in a map for mapping summary segments(e.g., chapter 1, chapter 2, and chapter 3) to identifiers for thecorresponding chapters of the e-book 116.

At step 710 of FIG. 7, the method includes appending the summarysegments to the text of the content summary. For example, the mediasummary generator 118 may append the summary segments to the text of thecontent summary for the e-book 116.

At step 712 of FIG. 7, the method includes presenting the contentsummary and returning the map. In an embodiment, the media summarygenerator 118 may also format the summary before presentation aspreviously described for step 520 of FIG. 5. For example, the mediasummary generator 118 may control the user interface 110 to display textof the content summary. Further, for example, the map generated for thee-book 116 may be stored locally at store 108, or remotely at store 120.

In accordance with embodiments of the present disclosure, a contentsummary may be generated at an e-book services server in response to arequest from an e-book reader or other electronic device. For example,FIG. 8 illustrates a message flow diagram of an exemplary operation ofthe system of FIG. 1 for providing a content summary to the e-bookreader 102 according to embodiments of the present disclosure. Referringto FIG. 8, the e-book reader 102 may generate a bookmark in an e-book(step 800). In response to generation of the bookmark, an e-book contentidentifier for the e-book and an identifier for the bookmarked positionwithin the e-book may be communicated to the e-book services server 104(step 802). The identifiers may be communicated to the server 104 in arequest message via a suitable network connection. In response toreceipt of the identifiers, the server 104 may generate a bookmarkposition-based content summary in accordance with embodiments of thepresent disclosure (step 804). The generated content summary may becommunicated to the e-book reader 102 (step 806). The e-book reader 102may cache the generated content summary (step 808). Later, the e-bookreader 102 may be opened at the bookmarked position when the user laterresumes reading the e-book (step 810). In response to opening the e-bookat the bookmarked position, the generated content summary for thebookmarked position may be retrieved from cache (step 812) and displayedto the user (step 814).

In another example of generating a content summary at an e-book servicesserver in response to a request from an e-book reader or otherelectronic device, FIG. 9 illustrates a message flow diagram of anotherexemplary operation of the system of FIG. 1 for providing a contentsummary to the e-book reader 102 according to embodiments of the presentdisclosure. Referring to FIG. 9, the e-book reader 102 may generate abookmark in an e-book (step 900). The user may then close the e-book.Later, the e-book reader 102 may be opened at the bookmarked positionwhen the user later resumes reading the e-book (step 902). In responseto opening the e-book at the bookmarked position, an e-book contentidentifier for the e-book, an identifier for the bookmarked positionwithin the e-book, and the time when the e-book was last read may becommunicated to the e-book services server 104 (step 904). Theidentifiers and time may be communicated to the server 104 in a requestmessage via a suitable network connection. In response to receipt of theidentifiers and time, the server 104 may generate a bookmarkposition-based content summary in accordance with embodiments of thepresent disclosure (step 906). The generated content summary may becommunicated to the e-book reader 102 (step 908). The e-book reader 102may receive the generated content summary (step 910). In response toreceipt of the content summary, the content summary for the bookmarkedposition may be displayed to the user (step 912).

In accordance with embodiments of the present disclosure, a navigationlink may be presented for linking a portion of a content summary and acorresponding portion of a media item. For example, a navigation link,such as a hyperlink, may link a displayed portion of a content summaryto the portion of an e-book that is summarized by the portion of thecontent summary. Conversely, a hyperlink may be displayed along with aportion of the e-book for linking the e-book portion to itscorresponding portion in the content summary. For example, if chaptersof an e-book are summarized by a content summary, the content summarymay include multiple navigation links that link to correspondingchapters of the e-book. In response to selection of a navigation link,the linked-to portion may be displayed or otherwise presented to theuser.

Content of an e-book may be summarized by any suitable summarizationtechnique. For example, content may be summarized by an automatedextractive technique (e.g., key-phrase extraction, text mining, and thelike). In another example, content may be summarized by an automatedabstractive technique. In another example, content may be summarized bya human. Further, for example, content summarization may be implementedby a combination of any summarization technique described herein.

In an example use of an e-book according to an embodiment of the presentdisclosure, a user may read an e-book and close the e-book. When thee-book is closed, the position at which the book is closed may bebookmarked. A content summary may be generated based on the bookmarkedposition in accordance with embodiments of the present disclosure. Afterlater opening the e-book, the user may select a bookmark icon to controlthe e-book to display the content summary. The content summary may beselectively adapted by the user by adjusting weights for differentsubjects or characters, the length of each summary, and the like. Forexample, the summary may focus on subjects or characters given greaterweight by the user. The user may also set an amount of content to besummarized (e.g., 10 pages) and/or a length of a content summary (e.g.,1 paragraph). In response to the settings, the content summary may begenerated in accordance with the setting constraints. The contentsummary may be generated based on an NLP technique, a semantic analysistechnique, and/or another suitable summarization technique. In anotherexample, a full-length summary of content of an e-book may be truncatedbased on a bookmarked position or other identified position.

In another example use of an e-book according to an embodiment of thepresent disclosure, a user may enter input into the e-book for trackinformation about his or her reading of an e-book. For example, the usermay select an “intelligent bookmark” icon to access information aboutthe e-book. The intelligent bookmark can provide contextually relevantinformation about the e-book, or section of the e-book, that has beenread. Selection of the intelligent bookmark can control the e-book todisplay or otherwise present the following example information: how muchtime the user has spent at a current reading session; how much time theuser has spent reading the entire e-book; a current reading speed (e.g.,words per minute); an estimate on how long to read the remainder of thee-book (e.g., based on a current reading speed and a length of theremainder of the e-book); significant characters in this section (also,with intelligently indexed links to other references of these charactersthat are navigable); and significant objects in a current section (withintelligently indexed links to other references of these subjects thatare navigable).

FIG. 10 illustrates a block diagram of the e-book reader 102 shown inFIG. 1 according to embodiments of the present disclosure. Referring toFIG. 10, the e-book reader 102 may include a controller 1000 connectedto a memory 1002, the user interface 110, and the network interface 112by a bus 1004 or similar mechanism. The controller 1000 may be amicroprocessor, digital ASIC, FPGA, or the like. In this example, thecontroller 1000 is a microprocessor, and the media manager 106 and mediasummary generator 118 are implemented in software and may be stored inthe memory 1002 for execution by the controller 1000. The memory 1002may also store the media item store 108 and the e-book 116. The userinterface 110 may include, for example, a touchscreen, a display, one ormore user input components (e.g., a keypad), a speaker, or the like, orany combination thereof. The network interface 112 may be a localwireless interface such as a wireless interface operating according toone of the suite of IEEE 802.11 standards, a mobile communicationsinterface such as a cellular telecommunications interface, or the like.

The various techniques described herein may be implemented with hardwareor software or, where appropriate, with a combination of both. Thus, themethods and apparatus of the disclosed embodiments, or certain aspectsor portions thereof, may take the form of program code (i.e.,instructions) embodied in tangible media, such as floppy diskettes,CD-ROMs, hard drives, or any other machine-readable storage medium,wherein, when the program code is loaded into and executed by a machine,such as a computer, the machine becomes an apparatus for practicing thepresently disclosed invention. In the case of program code execution onprogrammable computers, the computer will generally include a processor,a storage medium readable by the processor (including volatile andnon-volatile memory and/or storage elements), at least one input deviceand at least one output device. One or more programs are preferablyimplemented in a high level procedural or object oriented programminglanguage to communicate with a computer system. However, the program(s)can be implemented in assembly or machine language, if desired. In anycase, the language may be a compiled or interpreted language, andcombined with hardware implementations.

The described methods and apparatus may also be embodied in the form ofprogram code that is transmitted over some transmission medium, such asover electrical wiring or cabling, through fiber optics, or via anyother form of transmission, wherein, when the program code is receivedand loaded into and executed by a machine, such as an EPROM, a gatearray, a programmable logic device (PLD), a client computer, a videorecorder or the like, the machine becomes an apparatus for practicingthe presently disclosed invention. When implemented on a general-purposeprocessor, the program code combines with the processor to provide aunique apparatus that operates to perform the processing of thepresently disclosed invention.

While the embodiments have been described in connection with thepreferred embodiments of the various figures, it is to be understoodthat other similar embodiments may be used or modifications andadditions may be made to the described embodiment for performing thesame function without deviating therefrom. Therefore, the disclosedembodiments should not be limited to any single embodiment, but rathershould be construed in breadth and scope in accordance with the appendedclaims.

What is claimed:
 1. A method comprising: receiving identification of aposition within a media item residing on an electronic device;generating a content summary for a portion of the media item based onthe identified position; and presenting the content summary to a user ofthe electronic device.
 2. The method of claim 1, wherein receivingidentification of the position comprises receiving user input thatcontrols an application to bookmark the position within the media item.3. The method of claim 1, further comprising receiving user input thatcontrols an application to close the media item while the application ispresenting the media item to the user at or near the position within themedia item, wherein receiving identification of the position comprisesreceiving identification of the position of the media item that is beingpresented to the user when the media item closes.
 4. The method of claim1, wherein receiving identification of the position comprises receivingidentification of a position within text of the media item.
 5. Themethod of claim 1, further comprising receiving an indication of a timeelapsed since the user last accessed the media item, and whereingenerating the content summary comprises generating the content summarybased on the elapsed time.
 6. The method of claim 5, wherein generatingthe content summary comprises: determining a portion of the media itemresiding between a beginning of the media item and the identifiedposition; and using the determined portion to generate the contentsummary.
 7. The method of claim 6, wherein determining the portion ofthe media item comprises determining a size of the portion of the mediaitem based on the elapsed time.
 8. The method of claim 1, wherein theportion of the media item contains a portion of the media item residingbetween a beginning of the media item and the identified position. 9.The method of claim 8, wherein generating the content summary comprisesusing at least one of semantic analysis and natural language processing(NLP) techniques to summarize the portion of the media item.
 10. Themethod of claim 8, further comprising receiving user input that controlsan application to open the media item at the position, whereingenerating the content summary comprises dynamically generating thecontent summary for the portion of the media item in response toreceiving user input to control the opening of the media item at theposition.
 11. The method of claim 1, wherein generating the contentsummary comprises: retrieving a pre-generated summarization of the mediaitem; and truncating the pre-generated summarization based on theposition within the media item, wherein presenting the content summarycomprises presenting the truncated pre-generated summarization to theuser of the electronic device.
 12. The method of claim 11, whereintruncating the pre-generated summarization comprises identifying aportion of the pre-generated summarization that corresponds to theidentified position, wherein presenting the truncated pre-generatedsummarization comprises presenting the identified portion of thepre-generated summarization to the user of the electronic device. 13.The method of claim 12, wherein identifying the portion of thepre-generated summarization comprises: retrieving a mapping that maps atleast one portion of the pre-generated content summary to at least oneportion of the media item that is relevant to the content summary; andusing the mapping to identify the portion of the pre-generatedsummarization.
 14. The method of claim 13, wherein the mapping includesa summary hierarchy having varying levels of summary detail.
 15. Themethod of claim 1, further comprising receiving user input that controlsan application to open the media item, wherein presenting the contentsummary to the user comprises presenting the content summary to the userin response to receiving user input to control the opening of the mediaitem.
 16. The method of claim 1, wherein presenting the content summaryto the user comprises using a display of the electronic device todisplay the content summary to the user.
 17. The method of claim 16,further comprising using the display of the electronic device to displaycontent of the media item at or near the position when displaying thecontent summary to the user.
 18. The method of claim 1, furthercomprising receiving user-specific information, wherein generating acontent summary comprises generating the content summary based on theuser-specific information.
 19. The method of claim 18, wherein receivinguser-specific information comprises receiving at least one of a profileof the user, gaze-tracking information for the user, annotations of theuser, and social network information of the user.
 20. The method ofclaim 1, further comprising assigning a relevancy level to portions ofthe media item, and wherein generating the content summary comprisesgenerating the content summary based on the relevancy level of portionsof the media item.
 21. The method of claim 20, wherein generating thecontent summary based on the relevancy level comprises including aportion of the media item in the content summary based on the relevancylevel of the portion.
 22. The method of claim 1, wherein generating thecontent summary comprises generating at least one mapping that maps thecontent summary to at least one portion of the media item that isrelevant to the content summary.
 23. The method of claim 1, whereingenerating the content summary comprises generating first and secondcontent summaries for the identified position within the media item,wherein the first content summary includes a greater amount ofdescription than the second content summary, wherein the method furthercomprises receiving input for selecting the first content summary or thesecond content summary for presentation, and wherein presenting thecontent summary comprises presenting to the user the selected first orsecond content summary.
 24. The method of claim 23, wherein receivinginput comprises receiving one of user input and elapsed time since theuser last accessed the media item.
 25. The method of claim 1, furthercomprising: generating a navigation link between at least a portion ofthe content summary and a corresponding portion of the media item; andpresenting the navigation link to the user.
 26. The method of claim 25,further comprising: receiving user input for selecting the navigationlink; and in response to receiving the user input, presenting to theuser the corresponding portion of the media item.
 27. A systemcomprising: a media summary generator configured to: receiveidentification of a position within a media item residing in memory; andgenerate a content summary for a portion of the media item based on theidentified position; and a user interface configured to present thecontent summary to a user.
 28. A computer-readable storage medium havingstored thereon computer executable instructions for performing thefollowing steps: receiving identification of a position within a mediaitem residing on an electronic device; generating a content summary fora portion of the media item based on the identified position; andpresenting the content summary to a user of the electronic device.